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> It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done. Bertrand Russell might disagree. You don’t ne
by awb 5y ago
> It seems that a proper scientific mindset would declare something neither true nor false until a study is done.
Bertrand Russell might disagree. You don’t need to weight all conjectures equally or even entertain them without sufficient explanation or evidence.
Here’s his Russell’s Teapot thought experiment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
- sdoering 5y agoThanks. Spares me to post the teapot. Also in a lot of cases - this being one of it, we already know that many of the effects are not possible under the proscribed methods. Science already knows a lot from other inquiries and studies having shown that claimed effects are not realistically probable. It is like if I create a study showing that black cars with a combustion engine need gasoline to run. Someone later stating that red cars with a combination engine can run on pure water from the tap doesn't warrant a new study.
- colordrops 5y ago> we already know that many of the effects are not possible under the proscribed methods Do we? This is news to me. Do you have any studies or explanations as to how this is the case?
- colordrops 5y agoExcept these claims are not empirically unfalsifiable.
- awb 5y agoSure, but I think there's some leeway there. If I claim that if you burn $1M it'll rain for a year, it's falsifiable, but we don't really need to test it. The burden would be on me to demonstrate scientifically how this hypothesis has any merit before it's reasonable to test it.
- lumb63 5y agoRegarding the teapot, what’s unfalsifiable about the claims of the Wim Hof method? It seems to me that they should be easily able to be disproven if they are in fact false.